all the world is turning to noise
by flesh and bone telephone
Summary: "Do you presume to govern my heart?" — A boy from the red room can only tell lies. — crazy ensemble fic, klaroline but with extra shameless multishipping, Captain America MARVEL AU. I regret a lot of things probably.
1. Chapter 1

**disclaimer:** i would like to apologize to everyone who ever loved me, but i am a sham. i regret to inform you that i own nothing. i devour your surprise with guilty joy. i have a problem. i'm a liar. lock me up. take me away. away, i say.  
**dedication:** to melissa, this was your birthday fic. then i took it and ran away with it. sorry. no monogamy here. look awaaaaay. and also hannah who has been nothing but an encouraging force in my life and who DID A CAROLINE CAPTAIN AMERICA MANIP WHICH I WILL NEVER GET OVER. OMG IT IS BEAUTIFUL. SHE IS BEAUTIFUL. I'LL POST IT UP. YOU WILL DIEEEEE FROM ITS PERFECTION.  
**warning:** klaroline, but also - NOT SOLELY KLAROLINE. PERHAPS, NOT EVEN MONOGAMOUS KLAROLINE - but (gasp!) all the multishipping fervour of a shipper who has been burnt too many times. crackships, maybe even some OT3s. basically this isn't going to be any fun unless you keep your horizons open peeps. like if you're in here for sweet, uncomplicated klaroline luvin', man proceed no further. have no expectations plz, you're only gonna hate me as i, with relish, fail at even trying to try meeting any of them.  
**notes: **no.  
**even moar notes:** friendly reminder that i am trash.

* * *

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* * *

The Perfect Soldier program was not simply about creating a military grade machine that could masquerade as the world's white savior, they chose a woman. Why stop at propaganda? A couple of heads around a table, guys in intel who'd survived the martime might of the British and were still now seeing the Russian bear rear its head – they didn't simply want a super soldier, brawn was all well and good for now, but what about after the war? They wanted a Matta Hari.

Pretty, blonde. Private Gilbert smiled at her the first time she ever saw her, warm and easy, like sweet honey – too lovely for her own good. Was she cataloguing then, what Caroline was? Good Christian background, racially inoffensive features, blind faith in Uncle Sam and Apple Pie… check, check, check.

Except, no? They should have taken Stefan. Everything would have been different.

She wouldn't have had to pretend so long that she was good at taking orders – and she was good at taking orders – but she lost her blind faith the moment Stefan was taken, and the rest of it seemed to plummet out of her with him. When he fell.

It's 2013. They carve her out of the ice. When she breathes in she can taste exhaust in the back of her throat, has to grab the arm of the man by her bedside when she starts awake. She's been asleep, they say, for a very long time.

_Come on girl, America needs you_.

* * *

The muscles of her face are straining with the urge to slam Klaus's head against the table but she clenches her fist and breathes through her nose, temper flaring to a thousand degrees as he gives her a patronizing run through of the 21st century labyrinth that is the internet. "Damn it, Klaus," she locks her jaw, puts her hand on her hip, slides it into her pocket, before leaving it flexing awkwardly behind her back. She doesn't know what she was _thinking_ when she agreed to put on these ludicrous things – Caroline's not exactly gotten the free weekend required to get a handle of the fashion of the times, all she'd known before the military were baby doll dresses and minted bobs, since then she's been in nothing but uniform or training-friendly slacks. Grievously unlike her, but between S.H.I.E.L.D bullshit and the latest global blow out she hasn't exactly had time to get comfortable enough for a historically-accurate wardrobe. She feels awkward glaring through the thick lens of some (obviously blind) person's (stolen) glasses, smothered in corduroy pants and a baggy jacket shrugged over her gym shirt. Caroline reaches up, nervously dragging the brim of her baseball cap over her eyes. "What the hell are you _doing?_"

Klaus smiles, fingertips flying over the keyboard. "The file isn't opening, love."

"Are you fucking serious – "

"Patience," Klaus hums, like she's some overgrown arm seat pet that's misbehaving in his lap. "If we can't open the file, I'm running it through a tracer – S.H.I.E.L.D uses this to track hostile malware…" he trails off, suddenly realizing her deeply unimpressed silence. Klaus darts a look up at her face, his mouth thinning when she doesn't fall over her feet worshiping what is no doubt a genius move. "Well, seeing we can't read the file our next best shot is finding out where it came from."

Caroline opens her mouth and someone else speaks before she can rattle off her fingers the number of ways Klaus is wasting her time, "Can I help you guys with anything?"

She almost groans, but Klaus stands up to give the man behind her shoulder a beatific smile. She turns heavily to him, ready to stomp her feet. Middle-aged, soft round the middle, long, lank hair spilling over his shoulders and a friendly, inquiring smile. He wears a blue shirt, his nametag has a cheery scrawl proclaiming him an 'Eren.'

"Oh, we're just looking for honeymoon destinations," Klaus lies smoothly in accent-less American – and the change sends an unexpected trill through her, he has a warmer voice this way, affectionate, coming deep from the base of his throat, all husky and satisfied. His cheek dimples pleasantly, and Caroline's heart does a little, unexpected (infuriating!) flip, because he looks a different sort of man is his striped hoody. Someone younger, someone whose callouses might come from writing a screenplay in a coffee shop rather than handling Johnson Rifles and garrote string that slides between the fingers so fast the cuts it leaves _steam_. His hair tousles goofily over his brows in dark golden tones, a light scruff on his even jaw, his eyes a dim blue in the muted lighting of the electronic store, and this ability shouldn't keep shocking her, really. How effortless he can pull out his lines, looking for honeymoon destinations my fucking _ass_, you born-bullshitter. His smile is so big and _ecstatic_, shows the whites of his canines and if she was a _tiny_ bit stupider she could actually believe he was in love with her, like _really_ in love with her, like knock-you-dizzy, no-pre-nup, church-wedding _in love_ with her and hatred pumps up her ribs like a vicious flare in a dark, dark night.

Her hip knocks the edge of the display table, she doesn't realize what he's _doing_until Klaus's palm is a hot print on her side. Caroline's face freezes and every bone in her body locks in place. Klaus's hand stays, just above the swell of her hip, touching her like he's been doing it his whole life. His hand doesn't move, doesn't dip low, doesn't grope, and she still wants to punch him all the same but Caroline squeezes out a pathetically inauthentic smile. She attempts to sell it, this farce, even if her pulse is hammering, because no way is Klaus's hand around her waist, no fucking way is he touching her like he – like _he -_ her face_flames_. "I've been trying to get her to say yes for a long, _long_ time, so this has gotta be real special."

"Yeah," she bites down on her bottom lip to kill a shrill, claustrophobic giggle, and she realizes for the first time that this might be the only time Klaus is without gloves. That's why he's so _warm_. The heel of his palm slides away, but it feels slower than molten lava. Klaus returns to his typing, abandoning her to her lines, the bastard. She chirps on, wants to scream and laugh hysterically. "We're getting married."

_Ugh_.

"Congratulations!" Eren crows, delighted for these two lying strangers. Caroline's discomfort has obviously been bought as pre-wedding shy-bride antics, oh, Eren, you stupid, stupid man. "Where're you planning on going?"

She ducks away, looks at the screen over Klaus's shoulder. "New…Jersey?" _What._

"Uh," Eren says and Caroline nods emphatically. "Hey," he peers at her, and she keeps her place, every nerve alert. "…I have the exact same pair of glasses."

"Wow," Klaus says dryly, "You guys have so much in common."

Eren giggles, nervous. "Aw no, I already have a girlfriend." He squares off his palms to indicate Caroline's entire frame, and Caroline scowls, does not appreciate the impressed way he refers to her body. She's wearing five layers of fucking clothes, but figures a man's gotta find something to whistle at. "Well, if you need anything…just ask for Eren," and he flashes his nametag like a little badge. Caroline _really_ hopes the back wheel of his skateboard snaps when he's cruising back to his douchebag apartment.

When he leaves, Caroline's palm sits between Klaus's shoulder blades, floating up to the base of his hood where she digs in her nails. He grunts when she pinches the bunch of tendons there, _hard_. "You said nine minutes," She says, sweet as ice cream and cherry-pie and mindless, blathering oh-yes-darlings-how-fucking-high-darling? "Nine minutes ago, asshole."

"We're almost done," He wheezes back to sounding infuriatingly British, and she only relents when she sees the screen bleep with complex algorithms before zooming in, lining up their location like a target. Wheaton, NJ. She lets go of the thick fabric, fingers springing away. Klaus rolls his shoulders, limbers up his neck like a swimmer and looks at her curiously. "You know the place?"

"I…" Caroline licks her lips, feeling queer. "I used to."

She's ninety years old, time becomes separate, just as places do. She yanks the flash disk from the side of the laptop and moves away, and she really fucking wishes Klaus would stop looking at her like that, like he's got a million things ready to pounce off the tip of his tongue, things that are asking more than she's ready to answer, and knowing more than he lets on.

* * *

"Do you love him?"

She brings up her arm just in time for the bullet to spark off her shield. Her curls whip above her ears, they're under enemy fire, she doesn't have her mask, she doesn't have a scrunchy, her best friend has dead eyes, and the Black Widow weaves out from behind the cover of tank, trotting merrily by her side.

Caroline tears away from the gunfire, the side of an expensive Porsche banging under her shoulder, and Klaus slides a clip into his gun, calm as you please, asking her if she loves the person _shooting_ at them.

She can pretend she didn't hear him, wouldn't be hard given that everyone on the street is screaming their fucking _heads_ off.

Josh can't hold the bastard off for long, but she catches her breath here. Contingency plans skipping through her head like pebbles on a lake, none of them make it very far. She can't _think_. Stefan's shooting at her. He's shooting at _her._

"Well?" Klaus rests on his haunches, it looks like he's asking for her orders almost. Except that she knows Klaus doesn't listen to anyone who isn't toting an eye-patch or KGB affiliations. Learnt her lesson the last time on the ship. He's balanced on his haunches, with her on cover behind this luridly purple Porsche and his hair looks windblown, like he's put his head outside a car window, and he's looking at her as bullets ricochet around their heads.

She'd like nothing more than for him to catch one in the head.

"Shut up," she manages between gasps. "I need to think."

Klaus's firearm hangs between his knees, wrist loosely motioning. "What's there to think about?"

Her heart's thumping again, slamming against her ribs, her vision narrowing. Like they're about to drop her again, with nothing but the strings of a parachute and a faulty automatic – she'd had the anthem singing in her veins, the adrenaline, the knowledge that she was fighting with the very best at her side, that wherever she went, the red crashing around her, the shrapnel and the tanks, there would be the blur of dark hair, whizzing right by, close as a razor. Stefan. Stefan always by her side.

Stefan who tore the hood off the armored car and proceeded to fling them into oncoming traffic.

_What's there to think about?_ He asks her, calm as a dandy in his tea room. Light drawl, relaxed study of her.

How to save him, how to put him down. If it's really him, if it's really _really_him. A boy falling into snow.

Klaus smiles at her, his lashes sweeping dark against the rise of his cheekbones, so long it was a wonder they didn't tangle every time he blinked. He's _smiling_at her and it cuts through the frost of her head like a tooth saw, he isn't laughing at her, even as they corners of his eyes crack. "You're too far away, Captain."

"What?"

"Maybe it isn't him." Klaus calls her back, nonchalantly bending back so he can peer over the hood. The gunfire's stopped, and Caroline knows exactly what that means. An opening.

His eyes flick back to her, his expression neutral, his gaze cool. Klaus scuffs his knee with the M9 "Maybe I'll take a closer look."

She lunges out an arm, fingers closing around air. Caroline snarls, her hand clenches into a fistful of nothing. He's already zipping over the hood, racing towards the chaos.

She rolls out from the car , her shield up, her teeth bared. Like _hell_ she's going to get left behind.

* * *

They should have thought twice about giving a girl super strength, thought before they decided that was at all wise. Caroline was strong before they put her through the machine, their mistake was thinking she'd die for them.

* * *

"Go!" Josh roars, and she hesitates for precisely two seconds, and then none when his semiautomatic pummels the Hydra operative full of lead and a police car booms into fiery smithereens. The bridge gets further behind her, Caroline crunches across shattered windscreens and empty shelling and she leaves the hell of steel behind with Josh. Put her to sleep in one war, woke into the screaming next, but it's still disorienting – the noise, the sheer _anarchy_ of air punching rifles, and the whistle of a missile. Caroline gulps, racing.

The thing with the Winter Soldier is that he destroys, is a machine. _Ghost stories_, Klaus had told her, hard and dismissive. But he'd lunged ahead anyway. The Winter Soldier wears a soviet star on the mercury of his arm and moves like lightning, devastating in a mere second, disappearing in a blink, and never striking the same place twice. There is silence where she goes, the gunfire behind her getting out of earshot and it's enough to make a fresh soldier frantic. She can only hear her breath pushing, punching, gasping out of her – breathing she should get under control, damn it - off-stage screams, the steady hiss from the engine of an overturned car. Where _are_ they?

Behind is the destruction of soldiers, down the street, people clearing out of the way, she can't _hear_ anything but she knows, knows it the way she knows that the fire escapes of Brooklyn are going to be slick with rainwater in the nighttime, that the moon is going to rise in six hours, forty-seven minutes and 38 seconds, like – like Klaus, gutting her the moment she proves inconvenient. She knows it. It's Stefan, that's him, murdering everyone, hunting through the grey dark smoke of fiery wreckage, pace sedate, purpose sinister and deliberate in the undertaking. She knows it's him, she isn't ready for it. She doesn't understand it. It doesn't help to know what she knows, or what she thinks she does, Stefan is here to _kill_.

Caroline's brows wrinkle, she follows the emptier streets, the blocks with the contents of handbags spilled on the cement, the blocks as deserted as a Texan ghost town and she thinks damn it, he's gotten_far_, very far for a person walks like he's taking his damn _time_ and she thinks that maybe she's wrong, maybe she's gotten the wrong way, is following the wrong street, but that can't be right, can it? She doesn't meet any Hydra operatives on the way and it is disconcerting, distresses her, because it that's true then Stefan's following off alone and for all she _hasn't_ seen of Klaus she knows that she's more than like to find them in the same place.

She runs around a corner, when a surge of humanity pushes past her, she brings up her shield, darting between them, dodging the disjointed limbs, the acrid stench of fear like piss in the air. They hurdle past her, Caroline thunders through, and on the other side she _sees_ them.

Klaus's head is a smattering of gold in a world toneless, colorless smoke. She hears her own breath, heavy, muffled, and sees the silver back like the sluice of a shark fin through water – Stefan, not Stefan, not _her_ Stefan, bringing up his firearm, barrel pointed right at the Black Widow.

She's crunching onto the hood of the car before he finishes the motion, shield rearing back. The Winter Soldier whips around, slams his knuckles on the surface and his foot connects against her rib cage with all the walloping force of a freight train. Caroline knocks back off the car, falling in a rush of disoriented color, body screaming, but Caroline rolls, ducks down and is already turtling behind her shield as the strongest gust of gun fire in the world empties its clip into the paint.

Her shoulder judders. Her teeth clench, her eyes shut tight. Not-Stefan, _the Winter Soldier._

She thinks her knuckles nearly break on thar armor. Stefan staggers aside, and she wastes his single second of disorientation to look for Klaus. She sees the sole of his boots drag beneath a jeep, and she thinks you bastard, with an incredible surge of wild annoyance, and widler relief.

Caroline picks up, comes at him again. Sparks lighting off the metal in burst of white flint. Hurtling like a boulder, up and up and up, and slams the edge of her shield into his shoulder. He responds with an elbow cut to her chin that near knocks her teeth out. Caroline slams the shield again, head ringing, and he closes his metal fingers around it, and _twists._

Her arms screams, nearly pulling out of its socket, but she lets her feet carry her up, tucking into the air. When she meets the floor again he pulls and her arm sliding from the leather strap of her shield as ridiculously easy as the jerk of a silk glove. The Winter Soldier kicks her, she feels three ribs crack and her back slam against the truck behind her.

Caroline looks at him with shell-shocked horror. The Winter Soldier holds her shield in front of him, has _disarmed_ her, and she feels more naked than ever. In her civilian wear without the distinguishing uniform, doesn't he know _who_ she is? Doesn't she –

He has a javelin arm, that boy. If she hadn't shot out of the way the discus throw of her shield would have sliced her head clear from her body. It thunks into the paint of the car, the star disappearing into the interior. Caroline's arm shoots for it, pulls at the edge and it barely budges before he's back at her, boot breaking the tarmac, knife spinning between his fingers.

She stumbles back from the thrown fist, preventing him from caving in her face, and for a ridiculous, bizarrely absurd _split_ second his knuckles only graze the very edge of her eyelashes. Caroline lunges, grabs his steel wrist and throws her legs upwards, catches his elbow with her thighs and _twists_. Her weight's unexpected, her momentum unsettles his footing and they hit the floor together.

The Winter Soldier grunts, Caroline rolls away but he catches her foot and drags her towards him. She turns on her back, her other boot catches him in the jaw before he can plunge his knife into her calf, but his steel arm doesn't - doesn't let go! She feels the tendons in her captured heel grind together and though wild with panic, she kicks at his knife in his human hand instead – it clatters across the tarmac and he drags her back, and lunges over her, his weight pinning her to the ground and his arm rising to break her head open. God,_ Stefan_, the breath pummels out of her, they'd fought before as children, spats full of mud and lousily thrown punches. On the rooftop opposite her apartment with Director Forbes bleeding to death, he'd thrown her shield back at her, and slipped away. He isn't baiting this time, she wants to see his face - the skin around his shattered goggles bleeds and his hair whips around his ear in lank snarls.

He...He doesn't punch her –

His arm hovers in the air, light sluicing off his knuckles like silver rain and Caroline's heart catches on too much hope, watches mesmerizes and gasping as he lowers his arm, slowly, deliberately, and she thinks maybe, maybe you know me now, maybe –

Metal fingers dig into her throat and her face tightens. She splutters, his knee dug into her ribs and his other hand poised behind him. He's strangling her, for _fuck's_ sake – Stefan! Spit bubbles on her lips, at the corner of her eye there's silver, her palm slaps the tarmac, fingertips keening but Stefan simply flicks the knife out of reach, and Caroline's face fills with blood and thwarted rage, and she cannot _believe_ \- she balls up her fist hard and compact, punches at him once, twice, brings up an elbow and _shatters_ his head. He jerks away to the right, his goggles hit the floor and Caroline rolls for the knife, can hardly catch a breath, is barely to her feet before he's making for her again, the metal of his strangling hand glistening like a bullet and whipping at her.

Seeing his eyes has never mattered more. She licks her lips, a knock like that should have sent him into a concussion riddled sleep, but the Winter Soldier is a machine, and it is all she can do to stay clear of him – she's trying, she's trying to kick at him, to punch him, but it's like stepping into the path of a particularly sinuous train, and Caroline's throat is raw with all the time's she doesn't have the breath to shout his name, to shout stop. He's not going to. She can't reach him and trying is going to get her killed.

He's moving on his own, is not sweating, is not breathing hard. She makes a move at attacking him, aims a dagger throw at his thigh but he sweeps it out of the air the moment is leaves her fingers and it's back to stabby lunges again. Caroline's fast, but he's lightning quick. Everytime she steps clear it's in the bare wake of a silver arch of light before it becomes another she manages to escape by _inches_. He feints another sweep but punches her shoulder instead. Caroline lifts up her knuckles so the next slash bleeds across her forearms and she clicks her teeth together, _hard._

She cannot afford to remain on the defensive for long. Blood sweeps a warm flood down her elbows and she snarls grabbing his knife-happy wrist. Ducking her whole body, ramming her shoulder into his abdomen, he reacts quickly , but she shoves up, arms around his waist, and throws - Stefan flips behind her, rolling away. He rises, his sharp back, his lax shoulders and turns with his frightful, military elegance - and Caroline's body stills, her ribs compressing, her lungs crushed with shock.

His helmet lies in pieces on the floor. His eyes were still the same bottle-green she remembered, but his expression flat, like an automaton's, like a doll.

It shutters out of her, spills. "...Stefan?"

"Who the hell is Stefan?" He asks absently with the uninterested idleness of a child. Like he could care less for the answer, in Stefan's voice, with Stefan's face, and moving swift towards her, the knife sweeping -

The HEDP clips him in the shoulder like the fist of God.

Caroline brings up her forearm, shielding her eyes from the explosion of smoke. When it clears the shadow of Josh's wings darken the tarmac, and he whistles at the sight behind her. "You look like shit, let's go before worse shit shows up."

Caroline whips to face the source, and Klaus grins, sweat glistening on his brow, the SMAW slumping down from where he'd lodged it on his shoulder. He's pale, he's wounded -

HYDRA operatives swamp them and Caroline stifles a curse and bows her head. She hears helicopters, the media, finally useful. Brady hisses. "Don't kill her, they're watching."

She takes to her knees, numb as her wrists get cuffed behind her. She blinks, her eyes hot.

She'd figured losing Stefan was supposed to happen once, atleast. The first time he'd been captured, the second time falling - but it's the third time now. He doesn't even know who she is, he doesn't realize -

She's dragged to her feet, they shove her into the back of the military van. Klaus winces against her side, "So, was it everything you imagined it'd be?"

He's trying to make her angry. Caroline looks at him and hardly believes he's real. His bruised jaw, the blood cracked in his brow, his split lip - the ferocious, fever blue of his eyes as he loses blood. He'd sought Stefan out, he'd known him. Had chased down the street like he was indulging in a very dangerous game of tag.

"Shut the fuck up, Klaus," Josh sulks, taking advantage of Caroline's presence between them and Klaus's condition - he is out of throttling distance. "As soon as they get out of the city they're going to execute us. Where no one can see. They're going to give us unmarked graves. They're going to wipe us away like faulty operatives, like traitors. I did not sign up for your bullshit."

Caroline ignores him, doesn't flinch away from Klaus's eyes. She holds his gaze, she's not going to die, he isn't either - he doesn't _deserve_ the easy way out. He doesn't get to smirk at her like she should have known better, like he somehow knew more about Stefan than she did, like all the world's I-told-you-so's were brimming in his maliciously charming grin. Like he was _challenging_ her.

"You don't know him," she says, low. "You don't know _anything_."

"I know you," Klaus answers, infuriatingly simple. "That boy you loved is long gone."

"And the boy you know remains?" She hisses, "You don't know Stefan, you know the Winter Soldier."

"Do I?" Klaus hms, "Might be you should too."

She turns away from him, her wrists tight behind her back and speaks no more.

* * *

She thinks of Stefan falling, she thinks of the useless rush of distance soaring between them, and he falls to death, into the white abyss that swallows him up readily and without a sound. She thinks of Stefan falling, his eyes horror stricken, speaking to her as if from under layers of ice – like a silent film, the wind steals every sound away. Her fingers numb in the cold, stretched towards a chasm that doesn't drag her away. She thinks of life. Stefan falling and never landing. Her never seeing him land. A body broken by the plow of snow, a fall silent to her, as if he has been struck underwater.

She can imagine he will never land.

* * *

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_**tbc**_


	2. Chapter 2

**disclaimer:** you know the deal  
**dedication:** to melissa plz i am so sorry  
**warning:** klaroline, no monogamy. no beta. also some familiarity with marvel world, just go read some avengers fanfiction/wikipage and you will understand. also if you could guess who's who that would be so great.  
**notes:** nah  
**even moar notes:** updated like the last fic people wanted updated. like some of you swear that room on fire is coming out next year. maybe it is. maybe it isn't. idk idk. miss you guys.

* * *

_I am one of twenty-eight young ballet dancers with the Bolshoi. The training is hard- but the glory of Soviet culture, and the warmth of my parents… my parents...makes up for –_

_No…_

_No, that's not right._

* * *

After the failure in Odessa, Klaus begins to remember. The bullet just shy of his appendix, the neat stitches are all just remnants of a greater thing. The sharding cold of those moutains, the flash of that metal arm as the truck went over the edge. Even the client he'd failed to protect was nothing. The bullet went through too cleanly for the memory that followed to be so fuddled, so cloudy. A sharp, sharp cold.

Klaus remembers – he remembers him. He remembers in muddy glimpses a figure in a moving dark, a room full of rifles. Water filling a steel box, rising beneath his chin. Punishments. Rewards, too. Later, Director Forbes names this ghost. That let him live, even though Klaus knew that a confirmed kill with survivors was poor protocol.

The Winter Soldier could have killed him, but hadn't figured him worth the time. That wasn't Red Room rules. No survivors, no witnesses.

Maybe Klaus was just one of many needed to spread the ghost story. To distribute the reminder. To survive.

_Soviet star_, Klaus confirms with Director Forbes and divulges none of the thoughts that trouble, the images that evade him. Slippery edged. Just shy of reach. He does not say, I knew him.

_I knew him._

* * *

Captain America is found, Viking gods walk the earth, stealing tesseracts and destroying skyscrapers. Klaus assembles the fucking Avengers, a task he is loved even less for.

Bonnie Bennet reluctantly follows him from the river slums of Bangor, disdainful of any and all authority – Klaus understands the feeling. Though the scientist seems too composed for someone wanted internationally for apparently lethal episodes of violence. Klaus finds out for himself on the hellicarrier, leaping through the railings and dodging the whirring fists of a green colossus aptly named The Hulk.

But if there's anyone who throws tantrums on an apocalyptic scale it's the Goddess of Mischief, the little brat kidnaps _his_ little brat and Tyler is unnervingly obedient to the girl. Obedience has never been Tyler's strong suit, but there he is, throwing down with his betters, an eerie blue light in his eyes.

Klaus smashes the boy's skull smartly against the metal floor in the engine room, and barely resists doing it twice more just to be sure.

Davina opens the portal, it falls to Klaus to close it. New York crashes and rattles beneath the fist of an actual alien invasion. Klaus is maybe a little rankled from Davina's verbal ownage on the hellicarrier, resentful but keen on returning the favour. It is satisfying in the end to have Marcel take the bitch back to Asgard.

Captain America is just as pretty as the propaganda renderings. During the debacle she has occasional (and infuriatingly typical) bursts of self-righteousness which Klaus waylays with his irresistible charisma. His sardonic replies often make her face redden with impotent fury.

Caroline and he work well together in a fight. On occasion she is even nice to him. Sometimes she turns to him with a kind word as if in consolation or apology for her previous harshness. Klaus mouth thins, considering this soft-heart, this goodness.

Petrova's skyscraper collapses, an unavoidable casualty. Klaus watches it fall with some relish. Katerina is a bastard, which is a level above _fucking bitch_. The term is deserved considering that she has more jaunty entitlement than all the white old men in congress.

When Director Forbes dies Caroline has tears in her eyes. Klaus's ribs are uncomfortably close, he tamps down on this discomfort, like holding a breath. The two were of some relation, apparently.

But to Klaus…Director Forbes was the first to give Klaus a chance, after Tyler roped him into S.H.I.E.L.D by not taking the kill shot, by ignoring the orders of his handlers... Klaus would have died in an interrogation room (or very well murdered an entire platoon escaping it, either way it would have been troublesome for everyone) were it not for Director Forbes.

Director Forbes gave him a purpose, a place. She didn't touch his head, she didn't scramble his brain and put in things that were never there and take out things that should be. Like a silver arm, like a knife slick with rain water, a face with eyes bottle green. A room so drowned in red there could exist nothing else. The Winter Soldier was there. Klaus had known him.

Caroline recounts to him what she saw when Director Forbes got shot in her apartment. Fast, metal arm. Ruthless.

"Ghost stories," Klaus tells her in a hard voice, for once unable to summon up the quick veil, the mask of airy dismissal.

He speaks it with the back of his teeth, the whole of his spine straining beneath his black mission fatigues. Recovering from the sledge-hammer assault of all the things he cannot properly, fully name. The Winter Soldier, the Red Room. An assembly of lies, a hall full of faulty memory. A compulsion too childlike to be stored in his assassin's brain that whispers weakly, _I knew him._

* * *

"Stefan?" Caroline says. Klaus is filled with long-ribbed want and diminutive fury, sickly and cold. She knows him. _But I know him_, blood pumps between his clenched fingers, _another _fucking bullethole and the Winter Soldier still won't even look at him.

Shot through, something unnerving and riddled, something he recognise as a pain deeper than flesh, the hurt of a younger boy, a stupider boy.

You didn't kill me in Odessa. _I know you_. We were in the red room together.

Caroline is all eyes, all startling dare-to-hope haunt.

And the Winter Soldier doesn't even glance his way. Klaus sees the opening, pulls the trigger.

The Ghost disappears.

* * *

Klaus had seen the hydra wreck down, hanging onto the frame of the helicopter, word-choked by Director's Forbes side as they were bourne away. Tax payers dollars, embezzelled funds, so much metal slipping and sliding and roaring through the air – and Caroline – she was still there. She was somewhere, falling through, crushed beneath the rubble. The likelihood of her surviving that fall…

He'd watched, half-lurched into the world dropping below, knuckles white on the metal bars.

Captain America is found on the shores of the Potomac. She should have drowned, titanium formula running through her veins or not, the destroyed wreck is too far, she fell too hard, too fast, she should have died. Someone dragged her to shore, miles from the crush. She could have died.

When Klaus finds her in the hospital, body blue from river water and too tired to be angry with him, smiling weakly. Something in Klaus rouses to frightening life. She has survived and he knows that it wasn't without help, and she knows it too.

And he lied when he said ghost stories. He said, trust no one. But had, through a breach of assassin's programming, despite training, trusted her. To live, to never die. There is a light going out in her, when she looks at him. The Winter Soldier swam her to shore, he saved her. But then he left. He _left._

Klaus owes her more than the grateful grin. He gathers everything he knows, he gives her his blood red ledger, every file he's ever had access to. Every file he's ever hunted between Odessa and now about a ghost half-remembered, deeply lodged – the Winter Soldier.

There is so much _red_ in his ledger, blood he has been cockily dismissive of spilling, that stains his hands, his eyes. Caroline's hands are radiant, clean, unscarred with brutality, even if he has seen her knock skulls he knows that she will never stab a man in the back, slit his throat, or shoot out his knee caps. Caroline goes aims to rattle bone, to stun. Klaus doesn't know any other way but to head right for the jugular.

He has been selfish, has hoarded this knowledge before. The Winter Soldier, the Red Room boy, the boy from Brooklyn – he remembers then, a glimmer, a name. I used to call him Alexei, because he didn't have a name. I _gave _him a name.

And oh, to hear the word _Stefan_ tumble out Caroline, it had set his blood alight. Jealousy, pure and unreasonable slugged through him. That Caroline could stake her claim on this boy he'd only ever known as a ghost, a boy he was cloudily, furiously trying to reclaim in his brain, to remember. And she had said his name like he was the realest thing to her, more real than Klaus, more real than her very self – and she hadn't hesitated. She was dreaming of that boy from Brooklyn, her boy. That dead boy.

_I knew him_, he'd thought, and vehemently following, all instinct_, mine._

Both of them, not just the Winter Soldier. But Caroline too. Caroline who wouldn't say she didn't trust him as far as she could throw him because he guessed that she could throw him very far, considering. Caroline who he fights just as much as he fights beside. Caroline whose eyes wet so quickly, but whose anger he has never better provoked.

Caroline and her mouth smooth, stiff. The escalator. It was an entirely plausible distraction technique, he hadn't been lying then. People naturally _are_ embarrassed by public displays of affection, avert their eyes elsewhere. When he kissed her, the brim of her baseball cap knocking awkwardly into him, two of his fingers resting on the side of her neck and not daring to invade anywhere else….He thought she might bite him, and Klaus had wanted her dearly to.

He didn't know who he wanted more. The Winter Soldier was a ghost, but they'd taken him out of Klaus' head in the Red Room, and taken Klaus out of his – there must have been a reason, there must have been a _history_. Something singing, half-remembered, but memory all he same.

But they'd taken Caroline out of the Winter Soldier's head too and she dragged him back fitfully, in fistfuls. Snagging and tearing at a mountain and snatching something back. Something that made that dead boy drag her half-dead with him out of the Pontomac, something that had him asking, with some flint of confused anger beneath his voice too present to pretend at ultimate ignorance, "Who the hell is Stefan?"

Klaus can't tell her that. Who he is, he firmly believes, is a _was_. Stefan _was._ The Winter Soldier remains, Alexei buried beneath there too. A Russian name he gave a nameless boy. Maybe Klaus is wrong, maybe his doctrine is informed ultimately by jealousy and a misplaced possessiveness for both of them. Maybe the boy from Brooklyn is there too, maybe the boy from Brooklyn was there enough to disobey his handlers, to not confirm the kill, twice was understood. Thrice was a pattern.

Klaus has no place in that pattern. Whatever had been revived in that ghost came at the provocation of Captain America, not him, not a boy in a lineup of shivering boy-soldiers, waiting for Commander Mikael to break them on the training mats. Not Klaus

Klaus can only tell her who the _Winter Soldier_ is, on paper, statistics. What he has done. A Red Room boy.

He can only let her chase after him, find whatever it is that she needs. Maybe she'll even be successful. The Winter Soldier has never been off the ice this long, not since maybe the flashes and glimmers Klaus remembers so long ago.

His handlers have perished, he'll be slinking through old soviet safehouses which Klaus knows the coordinates of, which Klaus hands over. He won't have anyone to drug him, mind-fuck him, remind him that he's a machine. The Winter Soldier has become defective, has been defective before. When that happens they either exterminate, or rehabilitate with more memory wipes and memory insertions. The longer the Winter Soldier is off the ice, the more self-aware he becomes, the more unstable he is. Klaus remembers that much.

He'll run, lay low, cover up the arm. He's been trained to know how to pass through, stay hidden. But he'll be confused, frightened perhaps, wild. Turning rabid.

Klaus has the option of following Caroline on this search, even helping her. He doesn't think she'll find him, she hasn't got the right instincts for it. Caroline has fought on a battlefield, as a soldier, but never as an instrument in the dark. She has never fought a war cold, has never been a murderer, a spy.

She will not find him. This is the best Klaus can do, it is the only thing he can do. He gives her horrors and horrors, and runs away. Klaus sits poised before a press conference, brow raised at the judiciary, the governors and tells the senate subcommittee, _you_ _need us._

His face on screen, in files, on the radar. A spy come forth. All his enemies will rouse, the Black Widow is an Avenger now, and the Red Room bowls open with light and cameras, all the world's eye on him. Klaus pulls a goddamn Edward Snowden and releases all the agency's files onto the internet, S.H.I.E.L.D has been compromised by HYDRA, it's time the world knows.

Director Forbes, alive, hunts through Eastern Europe for the remaining HYDRA bases, Caroline runs off with Josh to chase the elusive ghost, and Klaus has his face broadcasted on every screen. Hiding can never be as easy after this, not truly.

Klaus is a Red Room boy. He is washing his hands, he is cleaning his ledger. Worthy of no one, of nothing. But this he does as himself, this he opens the door, he has shown her with his liar's mouth and his thief-ways, the truth of him.

He has drawn her a map, became the cartographer of blood. What ugliness she sees of Klaus she will know deeper. He doesn't know what else he can do.

It is all he can do.

* * *

_I am one of __twenty-eight __Black Widow agents with the Red Room. The training is hard but the glory of Soviet supremacy and the warmth of my parents…all my…parents…makes up for…_

_I can't tell what's true anymore._

* * *

For all that Klaus has known the man they called the Winter Soldier, for all that he has trained, sparred, fought with him – he is still as he was made, as he was intended, a stranger. A sub-human tool that knows only one function.

Klaus does not know his name, does not know where he came from, how old he is (how truly old he is), he has never asked and the Winter Soldier does not speak. Does not say where he came from, how he was trained, who trained him – how he became the asset that he is today. Maybe the Winter Soldier does not care, but more like they've swiped it out of him. He is a loose, blank slate, a computer chip, knowing only what was written into him by generals and military tacticians. He does not speak, when he does it is in a hard, gruff Russian – clipped, laconic. Klaus doesn't ask, nothing good comes from asking in the Red Room. It has not been deemed important for him to know, so it is not important for him to know. But he wonders, Klaus wonders, his palms going slick on the rungs of the brawling ring where every other Operative has had their bones shattered by the Winter Soldier's brutality in a fight.

Klaus wonders a great deal.

Klaus is sixteen the first time he meets the man with the metal arm. The Winter Soldier is a whisper of legend, misting through the soldier's line; as if he is is Koschei made, that he can never die, can never fail. Klaus has limbered up, the gossiping hushes when the man enters the room, and Klaus's body goes ramrod, ice-shot. The Winter Soldier is younger than Klaus expected, he walks deliberately, accamponied by two lietenants. Petrovich and Afanasei. His metal arm catches on the little light of the warehouse gymnasium, like the flash of a barrel, sleeker than gunmetal, brighter.

Broad shoulders low, arms braced, a solid centre of gravity. He slips past their tense line-up without even looking at them, and stops before the ring of battered mats. He doesn't say anything, only points, "You."

He spars with every trainee. Klaus further down the line gets to watch, analyse. The Winter Soldier fights quickly, unwasteful in his motions. Not with the elegant, minimal flourish that Klaus was used to. He threw hard punches to core points, A3 and A5, temporal blow, almost like a brawler but without the jerky lack of calculation. He dodges easily, his strength shows restraint; where he could break a bone, he sprains a limb. He does not kill the trainees or injure them undully. Everytime he puts one down he waits for them to get back up with a terse comment, an observation on where to improve; don't put too much weight behind your blow, you're shifting your centre of gravity too abruptly, make the motion smoother before you try to make it fast. Constructive, crisp. Then he tells them to go back to the line and moves down.

When it's Klaus turn, Klaus has garnered enough. He throws a blow that lands, the Winter Soldier grunts back on his feet but quickly throws Klaus over his arm. Klaus rolls, gets up. The Winter Soldier looks at him for a tense few moments. His eyes are very green, Klaus notices. Then the Winter Soldier nods and he says "Good."

Klaus' chest glows, breathing hard, when he returns to his place in the line.

The Winter Soldier trains them for three weeks. Klaus learns better, more, he wants to become like him. Wants to be better. The higher-ups have nothing but praise for the Asset, and in the Red Room praise is the only thing that sustains. They give you things sometimes, a book here, a record player, just so they can take them away. To show you that they can. Usefulness, that is the ultimate reward. Praise, being the best asset, that is the greatest thing.

Klaus learns to move like him, wants to become him. He learns to use the bare minimum for the ultimate impact. No superfluous gestures, no added commotion. Steel and grace. An economy of movement. The two of them share a vocabulary of violence. It is a supreme honour to learn from the master.

It is a greater honour to surpass him. And Klaus wants - oh, he wants, with all his young marrow, pulling like the drag of a needle, sewing him up, knotting with want - he wants more than anything to become more than even the Winter Soldier.

He dreams about being praised, about making the asset irrelevant. About being chosen.

The Winter Soldier stops training them. No one explains why. The last time Klaus had fought him the Winter Soldier's hands had shaken, he'd looked, eyes flittering here and there, quickly like the eyes of a thief. Like someone coming to. Coming undone. Becoming defective. Klaus had managed to get the drop on him two times with their fight, mostly because the Winter Soldier had lost his steel, his grace, his efficiency. More man than weapon then.

Klaus doesn't see the Winter Soldier again until he is eighteen. When he walks into the room to train them again Klaus has learnt more, has become more. He straightens, blood electric, joyful and expectant and looking to wet his teeth again. To show him what he has learnt.

But the Winter Soldier looks right through Klaus and Klaus knows immediately that he has not been remembered. He feels angry about it, but he doesn't open his mouth. They go through the same motions, the Winter Soldier has the same dead eyes. They see right through him, right through all of them. He speaks even less than before.

Klaus fights with all his might, all his skill, he wants to show him - but the Winter Soldier only grunts. Says Good.

Then there's the mission in Italy, in the Teatro di San Carlo. The details he ommitted from the mission report, the first time he lies and gets away with it, even for a little while. It is the first time has lied for anyone.

Klaus learns his lesson, The Winter Soldier learns his even better. They both pay dearly in the end.

It is the last time before Odessa that Klaus sees him. Or remembers. Perhaps that memory is a lie too. He doesn't know, he never knows.

* * *

"I loved him." And if only, if only love could be the answer to everything – if it could _forgive_ anything. Love is a creature, it is nourished, it is fed, it lives on delusions kept sacred in memory, is sustained by the falsities we tell ourselves. Sustained, poisoned, same things they are to the heart, we find. But love is a creature, and it cannot save, it can only grow or die – the rib-cage holds it, messy pulpy red. Love can only live so long before it dies.

"So did I," his eyes are glassy, wet. His laughter has no mirth, it mocks itself, but her hands feel small in his, and his thumb presses into the inside of her wrist like a hard kiss, ready to go glossy green with a bruise. The Black Widow holds her hands, his long doll's lashes glistening, his lip bust and bleeding. When he grins it is a hard grimace, so wide, pink between his teeth. "So do I, and so do you. Ah, it is a folly. He was everything I wanted to become, the perfect soldier, the truest soldier – I wanted to become him, so I wanted to kill him."

A man can kill the thing he loves and still survive.

Caroline stares a direct, blurry point on his shoulder, where the vest rips beneath his collarbone. There is a faint dusting of ash on his skin, and she lets him hold her wrists like a numb little child.

It is bizarre that they know the same man, she wonders if he loves him the way his eyes say they love her. Her gaze darts up to him, astonished and they pierce into her suddenly, clairvoyant blue – his nakedness shames her, makes her aware of her own. This nakedness of the soul. His warm hands, his sudden heart. This_openness_. He has always been honest with her, bizarrely so, given his line of work. But this honesty is a different kind, it gives truth and seeks to take away too. The tears on his lashes glisten, hold, do not fall.

She pulls out of his grip slowly. His thumb circles her hands, hard – but he isn't a fool, he can accept a thwarted performance, does not pull her back and her fingers slide from his like a hand from a glove. The stubborn snag, before the hushing, sleek removal.

Caroline's fingers feel strange, like they've fallen asleep. His eyes hold like an arctic cold, intense but now dry. His mouth thins, the blood in the crack of his lip stops.

In the Red Room they teach you to lie with such eyes. Speak the truth and the falsity in the same breath, like vodka and caviar, swirling deliciously in the mouth – like churned snow and horse shit.

"You throw that word around like it's nothing."

He is used to the tone of accusation, he does not shift except to let his hands fall to his sides. "You don't believe me."

And looking into his face, his liar's face, she is struck suddenly by a hatred that is so dark and deep and sudden it robs her of breath and makes her dizzy. Caroline takes in a sharp intake of breath, and she is the steel on the heel of her boot, she is the cold gauntlet, and she speaks startlingly level. "You look too much like you want to kiss me, Mr. Michaelson."

"Is that so?"

"You have never wanted to be a machine, not once in your life," She tells him, ire crawling. "You can't be in love with a machine, you only thought you could be. You don't know him, you have no right to him. We don't love the same man."

"Do you presume to govern my heart?" He doesn't sound wounded, there are no tears quivering in his throat, or gleaming in his eyes. He has a clear gaze, tone idle and curious. Unapologetic of the deception, and with no clear sign of guilt to indicate whether deception was intended at all. Maybe it's like breathing for him. Like eating, and sleeping. A snake cannot apologize for its instinct to bite, but that does not mean she will excuse him.

"If your heart were so easily governed you wouldn't be so good at doing what you do and being what you are."

"And what am I, Miss Forbes?"

"A liar."

It's true. It's _true._

* * *

**.**

**.**

**tbc**

**.**

**.**

* * *

_/inches back awkwardly into the the dark where procrastinators lie/_


End file.
